Chapter Text
We only left the tub when the water cooled and I espied the first hint of horripilation on her skin. By then, my clothes lay ruined, scattered around the tub, all drenched and probably beyond future rescue, but I did not care at all, cared not for anything in that moment.
I picked my Eliza up in my arms, wrapped in an extra-big towel, and carried her to my, now our, bedroom, where she insisted we continue where we had left off in the bath.
On an ordinary day, the state of the bathroom would have horrified me to such a degree I would have cleaned it immediately; but in such perfect happiness as I was then, my proposal accepted, my darling by my side, I postponed it. Nobody, me and my Eliza aside, would see or care before the next day anyway.
Sleep we did not very much that night; moments of passion aside, we talked a lot, breathless and blissful, about what we would soon have again.
“Promise me this time is forever”, Eliza sighed, tired at last in the early hours of the morning, and wrapped her arms around me as good as their shortness allowed taking into account my much larger frame.
“Forever and always. Nothing can separate us more.”
“Good, I am not willing to go on another two hundred years-long scavenger hunt for you.”
“My goddess hath track’d down the beast and subdued it”, I quipped and smiled adoringly at the woman who had been my wife and who would soon be again.
“Not entirely”, she remarked, “or else you would not object to my choices of TV programmes.”
Sighing, I admitted defeat- if it pleased my Queen, it was the right thing to do.
Contented with having won this battle without a real fight, my love at last fell asleep and I soon joined her in the land of dreams.
In the morning, I awoke to the sight of her still asleep, her face framed by a halo of dark hair, the beauteous look of Life on her features, the slow heaving and falling of her ribcage, her regular breaths and rosy cheeks that I, dead, could never have.
Sometimes I am very grateful I am the early riser of us two, mostly because the dead do not really require sleep or the sleep-like state we fall into, as we cannot die from lack of it, for this means my love needs not to see my reclining form so often which is all too much reminiscent of a corpse laid out for viewing: while in the day, I have the power to appear living through breathing and even feigning a heartbeat I do not have biological use of (and failed in the past; though I had tried hard when we had been first wed, but as Eliza had informed me on the night of our reunion without much success), all those conscious decisions mean nothing during the nightly reign of the subconscious and the mask of liveliness falls, leaving me a pallid, undead and undying slab of meat in bed next to her.
Tho’ she informed me that she did not know me otherwise, I still felt a little bad for her, thinking she deserved better, a man warm and living, the which she ruled out without exception.
“I’ve been with other men over time, living men. Their bodies were warm, but my heart was not. And when I left, sometimes after a night or when things ultimately drifted apart after weeks or months even, I felt no remorse, no yearning for them, no bitter-sweet aftershocks of love lost. I had lived with them knowing we would be companions for a while, but only for a part of the journey, that no living man, who would grow old and die, could be with me until the end of time or ever replace the one I loved first, to whom my nineteen-year-old self had lost her heart and whom my one hundred and ninety-nine-year-old self still missed.”
I recalled this part of our conversation the night before when I watched her lying there, comfortably wrapped up in her blanket beside me, her face pressed into my shoulder.
Never would I ever have thought we would one day have this again, be together like this.
“Morning”, she mumbled at last, her eyes as yet unaccustomed to the brightness of the new dawn, the first of a new era.
“Good morning, my love”, I exclaimed loudly and with great energy and zeal set myself to work with the design of sweetening the arduous process of waking up by disappearing beneath the blanket and enlivening her spirits with kisses she certainly hadn’t expected.
The darling hands that came to claw at my hair, shoulders and neck told me I was quite effective- after all, I have no need to ever stop for air.
I did not stop even after she had given a cry of honest pleasure and at last, when I finally felt it was time to desert my strategic place between her thighs, climbed up to the head of the bed again and drew the shuddering, pleasure-lost form of my future wife of the past into my arms, as satisfied as she with the effect I had had.
“You terrible man”, she greeted me, “you know you turn me rather off regular alarm clocks?”
“I thought it should be every man’s pleasure to please his future wife in all aspects of married life. Speaking of which, I shall prepare the bathroom for use.”
“I don’t care- stay a while longer.”
These words had a profound effect on me, for they reminded me of the last morning we had had together in our old life.
Eliza had not made it a secret she did not want me to go to Portugal and had, then believing me only sickly at all times, not dead, consolidated her uneasiness by saying I should not ruin my health by embarking on a trip that could consume my health entirely.
And she had been right, in a way. What she had tried to describe through euphemisms for death had come to pass, I had not returned home and was gone from her, though not for reasons of human health failing completely.
So I stayed.
The debauched woman I was soon to call my wife again and I proceeded to not leave bed until the early afternoon when at last Diana, who returned with a lot of cattish pomp and circumstance (meaning a semi-dead mouse squealing for mercy and bleeding onto the floor between her teeth) entered the room to drop said unfortunate animal at the foot of the bed with a look in her eyes I could not describe differently than as deep satisfaction at watching me, starkly naked, jump up to get a broom and a few other things to clean up and hunt the little thing still running about.
“You remember the kitten I adopted at Kingston? The white and grey one? I recall writing of him that he had some almost human streaks, but Diana takes it to a whole new level. I think she is jealous and wants your attention.”
A pair of amber eyes attempting to set Elizabeth ablaze with their disconcerting stare told me she was right in her assessment.
“Silly cat”, she scolded (who then replied with a meow at sensing she was being spoken to), he’s my pet, not yours.”
“Your pet?”, I echoed, amused. “I do not recall doing tricks on command.”
“But you are. I always ask you to open tins for me when I’m cooking, too.”
“So my new rank is Tin-Opener General or General Tin-Opener to my wife and cat. Which one?”
“I still prefer fiancé.”
Her smile made my heart burst with love and I hurried to catch and kill the fatally injured mouse in an act of mercy before disposing of it and cleaning up with Diana watching on, visibly content with her trick, and Eliza, now wrapped in my best banyan, by my side.
Over a cup of coffee and blood respectively, we set about planning the affair. We were more pragmatic than we had been many years ago and we had both very soon come to the understanding that neither of us wanted a pompous feast. We had had that before but now, we would opt for something small and intimate, a gathering of only a select few- which also had the advantage that we would not draw too much attention to us.
After two days of talks, we knew we wanted a) to be wed in the same church we had been married in for the first time, b) on the same date as before, c) only a small feast, to be held afterwards somewhere.
So far, so good. With the date and the church as nods to our past, I set to work to organise. With a little luck and a few well-placed calls, we had the church on our preferred date, leaving only a suitable location for later to be found. Alas, in the coming weeks neither of us was much in luck: the wedding being scheduled for the day before New Years’ Eve, many businesses were too busy preparing the coming day to house a wedding on such short notice or already had other engagements and festivities to prepare.
“What if we do it here?”, I asked Eliza.
“You mean-“
“I do. Remember, the last time, we ate at home also.”
“But this is not the Fort”, she objected, “not as grand or stately as Uncle Samuel’s home.”
“It is not, but we shall have much fewer guests. We will not invite half the army, all the Thomas’, Samuels, Johns and Richards Graves’ and your aunt’s fifty best friends for a start.”
“But who will cook? I recall we had a cook at the Fort, a luxury we don’t have here.”
“No, but maybe we could order? I have a- ah, well, friend who is eternally indebted to me for reasons I don’t wish to go into. He owns a restaurant, Italian, from whence I ordered your pizza the first time you visited me, and will find a way to deliver what I ask of him.”
Niccolo, though unwilling, could be persuaded to drive over and warm up what he had cooked in our kitchen while we would receive our guests in the living room. He would send two people, fully sufficient for the small number of guests we would have.
After long and careful deliberation, we decided we would only invite the four Coopers, Gemma, Francesca and, at Eliza’s special request, Mr and Mrs Flamel, for she owed them a lot and would be eternally grateful for the help and friendship they had given her over the years.
The invitations were designed by her, emblazoned with small sketch on the front of the card showing two hands entwined with a scenery in the background that reminded me of her sketches of the St Lawrence river in Upper Canada.
Inside, she had writ in black ink and with calligraphic precision the date and time of our marriage with the plea not to give us any presents for the greatest present we could each receive we would give to each other by pledging our souls to another on this special day. If anyone wanted to give us anything, we advised to spend it usefully instead, either for personal purposes more pressing than wedding gifts or to give to charity.
Eliza joked that we were trying to minimise the chance of being given a set of silver cutlery or something equally precarious (and frankly very rude) to give to an un-dead.
But before we would send the invitations out by post, we would tell everyone save the Flamels, at the time of New Haven, USA, in person, for Eliza and I both wanted to see people’s faces at receiving the news.
So, we invited them all for dinner, without the knowledge everybody else was invited as well, causing Francesca, the Coopers and Gemma to find themselves congregated around our table a week later without any idea why they had been invited.
My beloved had cooked a meal for the human guests, and I in the meantime I had been commanded to set the table in a formal fashion, with white table linen and the good crystal and silverware of actual silver and to select a fine wine which would aid to wash the news of our engagement down rather pleasantly.
Miss Gemma, not knowing (yet, I assumed, though we have to be careful to whom we reveal our existence outside the realms of ordinary humans) who and what we truly were, would probably not react in the same way as the Coopers or Francesca would, whose understanding of our continued existence for two hundred years in cold, terrible separation would likely influence their thoughts on our marriage.
Miss Isabel and Miss Melissa were simply merry and content to spend time at our house, for as they had discovered the last times Eliza and I had been asked to watch them, it held many curious items, things they were not allowed to touch at home or did not even have there.
Last time, which we kept a secret from David and Linda, Miss Isabel, having ventured into my closet, had found my uniform coat and donned it, alongside the sword I until then had simply kept in the cupboard without thinking twice about it.
Brandishing it, she had not only left an unfortunate cut in the wallpaper, but also posed a danger to herself and everyone else, wherefore I suggested I would rather show her the proper use of such a martial weapon outside, which Eliza was not at all pleased with, even when I suggested we could revert to sticks for training purposes before Miss Isabel was old enough for a real sword.
In the meantime, her little sister had, Eliza having been occupied in the kitchen and thinking I had both children with me, retired to my office, where the sly little one had found ink and pen of the historic variety, and made quite a mess. We were quite busy cleaning afterwards, but the children, exerted from sword-brandishing and producing Jackson Pollock-like art thought the day was a roaring success.
When their parents came to collect them later that evening, they quietly sat around the kitchen table where my dearest, most excellent wife had put a vase of flowers she and the girls were sketching.
David and Linda had been most impressed with the tableau we had created for them and said that we would make them into little ladies, and we had agreed- and exchanged knowing glances with the girls, who only nodded and behaved very prettily, even going so far in their act as to curtsey when they said goodbye.
The same little sprites now were the first to speak with Miss Melissa, the younger of the two asking:
“Why are we having a party, John?”
“A party?”, I echoed, “sometimes it is just very much fun to have a party, isn’t it?”
“But”, Miss Isabel added with all the gravitas she could muster, “you usually have a party when it'ssomeone’s special day.”
“Every day is a special day for someone”, I chimed and offered both girls lemonade, which they accepted with a frown that told me they were most malcontent with my answer.
“Is it a surprise?”, Miss Melissa prodded further.
“Yes, what’s the matter? Spit it out, John. Whenever we meet in plenum in this house, some bombshell is about to drop.”
Now their father, the person from whom they had likely inherited their inquisitiveness, had joined the conversation.
“More wine?”, I offered sweetly and purposefully took his doubtful mien for a yes. “Eliza has cooked a wonderful coq au vin, you will be hungry-“
“Joh-on”, now said Linda, “my hubby has a point.”
“Well, but there is no point in asking.”
“When your voice does that weird little pitch, you can always tell you’re up to something”, David then stated, accompanied by Francesca nodding and a suspicious “m-hm”.
“I might be, I might be not but the weather is fine today. Allow me to borrow your daughters for a minute?”
Miss Isabel and Miss Melissa jumped from their chairs without waiting for their parents’ permission and followed me and Eliza to my office. I took great care to slam the door audibly.
“I told you you would be the first to know”, I beamed at the two girls in front of us, whose faces lit up with excitement.
There were no more words needed, they understood right away.
"Yes!" the girls exclaimed in unison before first hugging each other while hopping up and down (a most adorable sight to behold) before turning to Eliza and me to congratulate us.
"See, I told you so!", Miss Melissa informed me with a very important little nod. "She is a princess, you know."
"Princesses needn't marry", Eliza added for educational effect. "But if she finds a person who loves her with all their heart, she might accept them."
"I am glad you did. Do I meet royal standards?"
"Certainly."
We kissed, much to the delight of the girls who likely pictured us in our historic accoutrements we had worn the previous Halloween looking like the princess and prince from a fairytale.
"There is one thing I need to ask you two- would you be my flower girls?"
"Of course, Eliza", Miss Isabel affirmed enthusiastically on her behalf and on that of her sister. Although my general understanding had been thus far that my darling did not want an elaborate Mischanza, I was glad she had selected to keep this traditional element in particular.
Miss Isabel and Miss Melissa could barely be contained, and seeing them so, excitedly telling each other they would officiate at a real princess' wedding was the drollest thing one could ever imagine.
"Now, now", I then tried to calm the enlivened spirits, "we must tell your parents, too, must we not? But keep quiet for the moment, I do quite enjoy letting your father guess for a little longer."
"Me, too" Miss Isabel confessed with a devilish grin and I was once more reminded why I liked the little girl.
The four of us re-entered the dining room under the girls' suppressed giggles and our own attempts to look solemn, which did not go unnoticed by Mr and Mrs Cooper, who gave us suspicious glances as they mentally tried to prepare themselves for whatever trick we were trying to play. Francesca, playing with a napkin folded into a work of origami, raised an eyebrow but kept composure, knowing I was intent on receiving reactions from them, a joy she would not grant me as punishment for being momentarily left out of the secret knowledge Miss Isabel and Miss Melissa shared already.
"Do you want to tell them?", I asked my future wife of the past.
"I leave it to you, if you like", she replied and so we passed the ball between us several times until we sensed that we had personally shot all the nerves there were to shoot in our guests. Aiding us were the girls, who grinned at their parents and reminded them they had been selected to know first.
Clearing her throat, Eliza at last took it upon herself to relieve our guests of the persistent tension and state of unknowing:
"John and I are getting married."
"Again?", Dave exclaimed, but joyously, which earned him a strict glance from Linda, which was meant to communicate to him to leave all hints of our former involvement out of his current speech as the girls were not yet to find out about our nature as long as they were so young and even my soon to be wife’s friend did not know either.
"Congratulations to you both!"
Francesca squealed joyfully as she first hugged my bride and then me. I could however detect a hint of melancholy in her features, brought on by our happiness, for the wound struck by her death at the hands of the false Benedict Arnold was still fresh enough to cause her pain at times.
"I am sorry Fracesca", I murmured into her ear, so lowly none of the humans in attendance would hear, which was no great feat anyway seeing as Elizabeth’s closest friend was very vocal in her effectuations of felicitations to her friend.
"Don't be", Francesca replied, "it is not your fault. besides, it is good to see happiness, so old and so young at the same time. Gives you hope."
“You shall find happiness, too, I am sure of it.”
“But I am happy. Happy that I am here- and to attend the wedding.”
“Speaking of which”, I now said to the entire room, “Eliza and I will be wed the 30th of December 2018 in Buckerell parish church at two in the afternoon. You lot save the date.”
Notes were made on paper and on mobile phones.
We passed a pleasant evening, which lasted quite long. Just before the Coopers departed, a little earlier than Francesca and Gemma due to their quite young children needing to go to bed, I took David aside: “And you shall be my best man.”
He only grinned, saying: “I am the best of men, trust me.”
The weeks flew past as the wedding approached with Eliza departing alone quite often to have her dress, which as I understood, was not of the off-the-rack variety, fitted, often with Gemma, Linda and the girls in attendance to offer support and to have the girls’ matching white dresses with rose-coloured sashes bound at the back into a bow as was the fashion for children back in our time (and which looked so much more elegant than the outfits we had found browsing the internet) fitted, too.
Naturally, my presence was neither required nor wanted as the groom is not supposed to see the dress before the big day and so, I went out alone to select my attire for the day, a grey ditto suit with a dark green tie, which I liked a lot. It was formal, but not stiffly so despite the tie pin and cufflinks, and I knew my love would like it.
We opted for plain rings of gold, selected together when for once I was allowed to pick her up at the small tailor’s shop after a sitting. Our choice was unassuming yet elegant, and I was somewhat nervous, as in the 18th century, it had only been customary for the woman to wear a ring whereas her husband would not, but David assured me I would get used to it.
Afterwards we went to pick flowers at the same shop I had always bought the wreaths and bouquets for her grave when I had thought her dead.
Miss George, the proprietor’s daughter, now no more purple, but pink-haired, greeted me before returning to the flowers in her hand, putting them into a bucket of water. Suddenly, she looked up, apparently then only realising I had not come alone.
“Mr Coe?”, she asked.
“The very same”, I bowed somewhat ironically, though in good spirits.
“Is that your Mrs?”
I looked at Eliza, who nodded.
“She is.”
“He’s talking about you all the time”, Miss George said while instinctively moving towards a vase of very big, red roses, “about how much he’s in love with you and that you’re the best person in the world and stuff.”
“He is my everything, too”, Eliza replied, smiling under her sunglasses.
As Flamel’s dram had left her looking somewhat younger than she intended, she sometimes opted for sunglasses to obscure her face somewhat and as is her wont, wore an elegant face of makeup with red lipstick and immaculately drawn lines of eyeliner, not too short, not too long as would appear amateurish or very schoolgirl-like, just perfect, tho’ invisible underneath the dark-tinted sunglasses.
That day, she wore a red trench coat over a black dress and golden jewellery with her habitual heeled shoes. In combination, these items made for a stunning look that easily put the royal duchesses so revered these days to shame.
I was under the impression Miss George was as blinded by the bright sun of my Eliza’s appearance as I, and somewhat intimidated also at seeing the sublime Goddess standing in her shop.
Miss George asked Eliza what else she wanted with her roses and handed her a pretty bouquet, which I paid leaving a generous tip before we went about the business we had originally come for. In the end, our choice for decorating church and home were white roses and Christmas roses as their elegance and colour reflected the occasion splendidly.
We were very, very busy at all times, so busy in fact, we in the weeks running up to the wedding as suddenly October was gone from us, November sped by like a high-speed train and the year turned into its last month, did not have much time for each other apart from going to bed and reading together as often as we could.
My love once said that she did not recall our last wedding being so stressful, to which I only replied that neither of us had much to do for there had been servants and above all, Margaret Graves who had ruled over the household as she pleased and thus also taken the liberty to organise the majority of the wedding.
Even though our circle was very small, it was still meant to be a beautiful occasion all present should like to think back to and I intent on making it perfect.
Only Christmas offered a brief respite but also reminded us we were just one week shy of our wedding and our hen- and stag dos respectively to be held three days later.
Eliza’s choice was a quiet evening with Gemma in order to tell her what she hadn’t done before, which was absolutely necessary, given she was her friend and would be a welcome guest in our home.
I had opted against doing anything- should David, in his position as my best man, should come over if he felt like it. However, I had underestimated him greatly. On the same night Gemma and Eliza went out (not ten minutes since they had left the house had passed) and I had just contentedly withdrawn to the sofa, watching the news with a purring cat sitting on my lap, the doorbell rang and David Cooper’s bearded face greeted me, grinning mischievously.
“Up and out you get, John. Who knows when, or rather if, you’ll ever be allowed to go out again, eh?”, he winked and pressed me much to join him.
Seeing him in such a state of great anticipation, I had not the heart to tell him no and since I thought that my parched mouth could do with an alcoholic beverage anyway, I decided to try what he proposed, a proper stag party- of two people.
Surely, it could not go wrong, could it?
Of course, it could.
It started with me and David imbibing immoderate amounts of spirits in a silly drinking game forcing us to drink whenever the other used one of a set of words we agreed upon beforehand- upon David’s suggestion, these included the, and, wedding and for some reason unknown to me knickers.
We soon were quite inebriated, which raised his spirits and dampened mine, causing me to become pensive and rather anxious regarding the wedding. Would everything go as planned? Would Eliza be happy with it? Would she still love me in a year’s time when she would finally realise I am old and boring?
“Shut it Farinelli, you’re well past the point of needing to fret. Come on, you’ve charmed a beautiful woman into making the same mistake twice, eh?”, David tried to make light of the situation and nudged me between the ribs, though I only took note of the rather rude slight his diction had contained.
“If I am so good a singer as you imply, I should sing Köchel catalogue number 231 for you”, I riposted, satisfied when the coin did not drop. Modern people and their sloppy education.
“And, as the existence of eleven children gives undeniable evidence for, I have not been castrated.”
“Oh well, enjoy yourself then, Mr Manly Man, who knows how long it lasts- she’s got you by the balls now.”
He laughed and chugged his beer in one unsightly gulp before frantically ordering another one. God, I regretted having attempted anything such as a stag-do and rather wished myself to be shut up in a tomb with Abraham Woodhull lecturing me about the art of espionage than sitting in a run-down pub praying closing time was near.
“Listen up, good people of Exeter”, came oh-so-dear David’s drunken bellow, “John here-“ (at that he pointed at me in a quite uncouth fashion) “is getting married! Married, folks!”
A line of congratulants formed with lots of strange, unwashed men patting my shoulder or howling most wildly, which I did not appreciate at all- the bottle of whiskey we got on the house as the bar tender assured us however to mark this celebration, I did and David and I made quick work of it.
The pub grew emptier by the hour until we, apart from a few late-night billiard players who had ordered their last pint hours ago, were almost utterly alone.
We were finished drinking and had gone rather quiet; there was nothing I longed for more than my bed and my future wife when wicked David spoke again.
“Mate, like, do you have a good story? Like screwing up history big time? You can’t tell me you didn’t accidentally invent the ball-point pen or undies with flies?”
“I haven’t.”
“Ah, come on”, he slurred.
“Or does Ann-Liza? Like, you two are here sooooo long. You must’ve met some great people over time, fun guys and girls…”
He flashed me a lewd grin.
“You are quite rude.”
“Stuck up, are we? Come on, I’m sure Ann-Liza is like the most hardcore woman ever, like, she probably sliced off Napoleon’s Bonaparte or something. I bet you’ve got some wild stories as well. Storyyy, pleaaaaase…”
“But nothing rude.”
“Ok”, he answered demurely and somewhat disappointedly and emptied the bottom of our whiskey bottle.
It was not that I did not have any stories worth telling and the alcohol had loosened my tongue considerably.
“I mean… It was 1815 and I stayed at Torquay, because my little Harriet was visiting friends there and I desired to keep an eye on her as she was travelling all by herself… I happened upon a young lady of scarce eighteen years, pregnant by the smell of her whom I assisted in ridding herself of a beggarly fellow accosting her in the street. To shew her gratitude, she invited me to her abode, whence she lived in sin with an unsavoury character, a certain Mr Shelley. He at present not being home, she offered me some port, which I accepted, but was intent to leave again soon to look for my daughter and prevent myself from forming any attachment to a young person in age not far exceeding my own son Henry, for whom I had felt a natural protectiveness when the stranger in the street had importuned her. When I told her important business demanded me to leave, she leapt to her feet with the vigour of youth that was not eclipsed by her condition and imploringly laid her hand on mine in an attempt to bid me stay, yet recoiled the second after she had touched my skin- ‘but oh! You are so cold!’ she exclaimed and stepped back, balancing herself against the sofa, ‘are you sick? Should I fetch a physician? But no, you cannot be sick- you shew no other sign of illness, and so cold is your skin I can scarce believe it is that of a human being-‘ I could not bear viewing her so distressed and sat her down, fearing the child might come to harm were she to faint, an opportunity her curious mind eagerly seized to explore the matter further. She felt both my wrists, my neck and at last my chest, where she found my heart un-beating, for tho’ I can pretend and make it quiver at will to feign liveliness, what reason had I after the loss of my Eliza? The fair young person then held me captive by remaining in that pose, her hand on my heart, and looked at me with round, brown eyes asking ‘sir, if your heart does not beat, then you do not live and if you do not live, then what are you?’
‘I cannot tell you’, I replied, ‘for the secret is far too dreadful for so young a mind to learn.’
‘No!’, she then exclaimed with fervour, ‘you must tell me, sir- no, indeed, you need not. But if I take a guess and ask you if it is true, you must tell me the truth if you are an honest man.’
‘I am no man at all’, I told her, ‘for that would mean I am human.’
She paused a while and then said: ‘Very well, allow me to know your age?’
‘Sixty-four’, I replied honestly, wishing I would look my age and grow old and die one day very old, hours after my Eliza’s demise so she would not suffer the pain I viewed her suffering, rather than sitting here with this young lady, who furrowed her brow: ‘A young age for someone of your kind. I have read Die Braut von Corinth and similar works, you must know.’
‘I am not someone, I am something. A creature does not deserve the same honorific as a man’, I corrected her.
She looked at me most piteously- ‘but you are sentient and capable of thought as humans are and were, if I am not mistaken, one of our race once.’
‘Sentience does not excuse my nature or raise me above such other creatures as hounds and wolves, hungry to kill and neither does it make me liked or likeable by common men.’
‘You must be very lonely’, she said in a brittle little voice that almost tore my heart out (not that it would have mattered, for my existence would have continued).
‘You need not concern yourself with such matters. I shall prevail and will long after I leave this house. You will die one day, and I will not. I shall not be granted this favour God has given the living. My wife thinks me dead for good and has no desire to ever search for male company again; my children are raised without their father and I live with the knowledge that one day, they, whom I can only observe from afar, shall die and I must watch on.’
The young lady’s face revealed to me her pity and the hand that had transported her pulse into the cavern of my chest retreated to grasp my hand in a gesture of most innocent compassion.
‘You must promise me to cease thinking so’, she ordered me, ‘there are sure to be many who would envy you.’
‘Only fools would appreciate the abortive existence of a fiendish creature’, I told her and bade her release me.
‘Say, are you not hungry for my blood?’, she next enquired. Although she was quite appetizing, her being with child kept me from biting her, for how long however I could not tell.
‘Yes’, I answered, ‘which is why I must be shunned and vegetate unloved’, awaiting her to claw at my face with her fingernails in order to be rid of me, but no such assault came.
Instead, she studied me intently and wept a few drops of bitter tears, lamenting my condition.
I admonished her, saying it was not good for the child, and she agreed, saying she was tired. Since her lothario was not home and the couple not wealthy enough to maintain a permanent housekeeper who could have assisted, I took it upon me to carry her upstairs and laid her on her bed, draping the blanket over her as I had done with my own daughters so many times.”
I closed, somewhat affected by this old tale, of which I had not thought in a long while.
“Shit”, my thoughts were disrupted by one of David’s, spoken aloud, “You’re Frankenstein’s Monster, are you?”
“Correct. Though young Mary added the aspect of being patched together of multiple corpses- one apparently wasn’t scary enough.”
“Man, that’s so sad.”
David proceeded to hug me and wept tears of true sadness, which I told him not to do and ordered another round to make him happy again, feeling somewhat guilty for having made him so sad. From then on all is a blur, which culminated in the two of us waking up on the floor of my living room, blankets thrown over us that we had certainly not fetched for ourselves.
“Good morning”, Eliza had chimed, “rough night, was it?”
Neither of us was able to answer coherently before not pain killers had annihilated the throbbing headache. As soon as I was able to think and speak again, my first vow was to pledge never to drink so much again as I had the previous day.
“Noble words”, Eliza had chuckled and allowed me to lay my head in her lap as we sat next to each other on the sofa only moments after David had gone, winking at me and telling me this had been one of the greatest nights he had ever had.
“How did Gemma fare?”, at last I asked my future wife.
“Telling her was a wild ride, really. It was good I invited Francesca on short notice, she helped a lot. In essence, Gemma doesn’t really know yet what to think but, as she says she’s open to ‘all kinds of new stuff’, so I guess you’ll charm her at some point.”
“I only want to charm you, everybody else doesn’t count.”
“If that is true, you’ll get sober properly and presentable for the wedding”, she advised me, “I am going to have the most handsome of husbands and I intend to show it to the world.”
As expected, the aftereffects of my stag party haunted me well into the next day but were gone by the 30th.
Eliza had moved into her old flat with Gemma for the night, who would accompany her to Church also and pick up Francesca, who lived relatively close by.
The arrangement was made to prevent me from seeing her in her dress and of course to increase the longing for another that was supposed to culminate in the wedding night.
By the time I arrived at church (early and on my insistence alone), I was the only one there and already shaking.
Nobody ever told me, not even my godfather who had had two wives, that marrying a second time is just as nerve-racking as the first.
Luckily our guests, who soon arrived, distracted me and I busied myself talking to them in order to momentarily quit fretting and longing for my love.
But she just would not arrive, even when our guests were already seated in the pews and I had already nervously taken my place at the altar.
Five minutes.
Seven minutes.
The bride is always a little late, they say, be it because of last minute issues with her attire or because it is fashionable and a means to secure her grand entrance. My poor heart suffered greatly in these endless minutes that almost weighed as heavy as another two hundred years without her, worrying she might have made up her mind, even if my brain scolded my heart for such silly, disloyal thoughts. She would come.
And she did.
The creaking of the church door at last chased all my doubts away. She was here, and within seconds, I would see her for the first time.
Naturally I did not turn around, as this would have been very tasteless. The wait to be allowed to lay eyes on her as she walked herself down the aisle with sure steps somehow managed to appear even longer to me than the entire wait for her to arrive.
Finally, the moment arrived and I am not exaggerating when I say I shall always cherish this memory among my dearest.
The dress had of course been kept secret to me, as it had been the first time, and so, seeing Elizabeth in it for the first time, was a sight that propelled me into the heights of most profound joy; I had suppressed tears in front of our guests in 1782, now they fell freely; my Eliza was Beauty Personified, to such a degree even Venus would have to have conceded and knelt to hand my darling the apple of discord.
On our first wedding day, she had been enwrapped in silks elaborately embroidered and with costly lace trimmings, her hair arranged into a mass of dark curls cleverly pinned to her head, lightly powdered- now, she had made the choice for an entirely different apparel.
My darling wore a cream-coloured dress, quite simple in its cut with a square neckline and ending at knee-length, with peplums at the side and a short jacket against the December cold with a row of ornamental buttons on either side, of the same colour and on her head, resting on a wavy bun, a matching pillbox hat with a small net-like veil that did only cover the area below her eyes in a delicate adumbration of tradition.
I had loved and adored her in her attire of our first wedding day and loved her just the same seeing her like this, a look of elegance and beauty shaped by timelessness and a mind unwilling to submit to current fads of bridal fashion, which, as my reading before my engagement, were about “beach looks”, “tattoo lace” and so-called ball-gown styles that no woman who had ever attended a real ball would have worn for reasons of tastelessness- what lady of taste and connexions would dare to be seen attired in rhinestones, cheap lace made by a machine, not a craftswoman, and tulle?
Our guests, equally stunned by the vision floating down the aisle of Buckerell Parish Church, looked on in awe as Eliza, so small in size and yet resplendent as a thousand suns, walked toward me.
She smiled at me and I wanted to weep with joy, kiss her right then and there and never let her go again even before our vows were made.
The ceremony was very solemn and beautiful and with us were both the past and the future, sitting in the pews and buried beneath the church floor.
Only the name Anna used to address my bride as we exchanged our vows reminded us of the past months, the pain, the sadness, the terror and unimaginable horrors we went through, all who were gathered here with us, but not in a negative way. For Anna, fighting for and with me during these dark times had saved me, had brought back my Elizabeth, the one whose trembling fingers now put a ring on my equally shaky hand.
As we, after the conclusion of the service, left the church, my again-wife glanced up and smiled at a white marble monument erected there for her uncle, my godfather, which had been designed by Miss Burges, her best friend in days long gone by.
“They’re here with us”, she whispered through a veil of tears she tried to blot away without blemishing her makeup, “I can feel it”.
And I felt it, too.
They were all there with us, sitting in the pews that appeared empty to our small company of guests, but were actually filled: Miss Burges and her ward Julia, who grown into somewhat of a family member, too and had lived to become the wife of the sixth Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada; the Graves’, Admiral and Mrs Graves, the former most content and suppressing tears of joy, the latter attempting to appear entirely calm and untouched by the ceremony and the fact that I had for a second time, as she would put it, “seduced” her niece against all odds and most importantly, our children, young ladies and gentlemen dressed in the fashion of the early 19th century whose faces showed naught but pristine happiness.
I wish I could say we would have been a family like that, but alas, we had never been; Admiral Graves had died a month shy of our third child Harriet’s birth and Margaret, the Old Bat, had done everything she could to rid herself of me as she could never overcome her disapproval of me as Elizabeth’s husband- not to mention little John and Katherine, who had been taken from this life too early under tragic circumstances, but were there with us, too, youthful, grown and happy.
For one moment, even though we had never been, we were. Would that I could have taken them into my arms and embraced them all at once, telling them how wonderful it was to be reunited with them all again (even the Old Bat, whom Eliza surely missed a little, given she was her mother’s sister and had helped raising her), but of course, such things cannot be.
The dead are dead, but this moment, like a fleeting ray of sunshine illumining an otherwise cold and grey winter day, the moment of feeling embraced by their light and warmth that assured me they were happy to see us wed here again, before the vision faded, and the church was again as it looked to our handful of guests.
This moment, so very short and bitter-sweet, taught me something quite important. I recall Hewlett using similar words when he stood over me and watched me die (not without satisfaction on his face), but I took them for cynical mockery of my person.
-And I doubt that at the time, Hewlett truly understood, too.
Like nature, all life, or rather existing in my case, is a circle of creation and destruction.
It does not solely refer to the continuation of Life in general, of life and death coming and going, summer leaves falling in autumn to regrow in spring, all creation and destruction is united within us- we create, we destroy, we exist. We are created and destroyed over and over again, shaped, by the people we meet and experiences we make, constantly looking with one eye towards the future and to the past with the other.
And it is good. Life is good if we only make an effort to have it be so, to ourselves and to others, through creating happy memories, art, poetry, science, scholarly works, and destructing- unhealthy relationships, doubts, malignant powers and dark thoughts.
All this wisdom which I had been obscured to me for so long suddenly washed over me in that moment with crystal-like clarity, my Eliza there with me as time itself appeared to stand still for the moment of my realisation before slowly resuming its regular pace again and I remarked upon the music played by the organist as we walked out of the church, now wed again.
“Mrs Simcoe”, I addressed her, content and happy. I never thought I would do so again.
“Governor, husband mine.”
Our well-wishers congregated outside to take pictures, a task David and Gemma had gladly volunteered for. Miss Gemma’s pictures were more of the artistic sort (and later won her a significant number of so-called “likes” on her Instagram-account) whereas David let us all pose for more conservative portraits, on which he also appeared, thanks to a timer and tripod.
“So you are the man Elizabeth searched for all the time”, an old man, doubtlessly Nicholas Flamel, approached me.
“I am”, I nodded, and received the congratulations from his wife Perenelle also, whose matching purple skirt, blazer and hat made for a striking ensemble.
I also figured that the hat pin, one striking specimen likely from the early 1900s, could do more than holding her headgear on top of the iron-grey mass of elaborately pinned back tresses.
“You must come visit us in New Haven”, she announced while taking and shaking my hand with such strength as I would have much rather ascribed to a man in his twenties or thirties. “And make our Eliza happy this time, will you?”
“I shall do my best”, I smiled curtly and my attention was drawn to her husband again, who, like his wife, advised me to be a good husband unto the woman they had come to love like a close friend, a daughter almost and also extended an invitation to us.
The Misses Cooper, who had not yet exhausted their rose petals, started to throw them into the air to create a romantic rainfall of roses when I, for our cheering guests, took Eliza in a firm embrace and kissed her passionately.
When we, or rather the humans of our company, started feeling cold, we retreated to the blessed heating system of our cars to drive home, where Niccolo’s men, under Diana’s watchful eyes, had laid out tableware and prepared a light meal for everyone.
Finally congregated around the table with a young Cooper on either side of us, the lively chatter of our guests ceased and all looked at us in anticipation.
Knowing it was expected of the groom, I was intent to rise and make a speech, but Eliza put her hand, now bearing a ring, on my arm and bade me not to.
In her eyes I could read that she thought we should not further belabour tales of the past or the future, not give ourselves and each other more pain by elaborating too heavily on how we had come to be wed on this day, in this year.
Instead, she rose with more grace than anybody else I ever saw and said simply, “To all of you who are with us on this special day and to absent friends.”
The toast was reciprocated, simple, a nod to our past and to our future that respectfully honoured the dead and the living alike.
After the food I could not touch but was told had been quite pleasing, more wine was had and merriment ensued among our small, intimate circle. Even Miss Gemma, who had been told the truth on Eliza’s hen night, laughed merrily and almost snorted red wine back into her glass as Mr Flamel made a joke she found amusing.
By ten in the evening, Diana had decided she was part of the proceedings, too and had immediately been festively attired by the young Coopers using the table decoration, giving her a collar of white ribbon and flowers. She was not content being treated so, or perhaps had hoped that on a feast day, she would be given a special place at the table with special treats of sea food, but could be appeased with some salmon- of course I had not forgotten her and merely had lacked the time to feed her immediately after our return from church.
“You have the prettiest cat in the world now, John”, Miss Isabel informed me and laughed as Diana walked over to the sofa to take her place in the middle of it as if it were a throne.
“I might, but that’s not important. I have the prettiest wife in the world”, I grinned at Eliza who rolled her eyes and, under clapping and much amusement at my terribly dramatic and overly-sweet declaration, leaned in for another kiss.
“Dance, dance, dance”, they soon started to chant in a chorus, Linda clapping, Mrs Flamel putting her foot to the floor as if she were dancing an estampie.
Sighing theatrically, I rose to bow and offered my hand to my love, who acknowledged my request for the first dance of the evening with a polite nod and we then proceeded to strut into the living room, where we were followed by our guests.
Linda and Dave made quick work of pulling the sofa to the wall to grant us all more space, allowing our guests to congregate in a semi-circle around us.
“One needs music”, I declared, “or else you will find this demonstration not exactly to your satisfaction.”
“Wait a sec”, Gemma demanded and made quick work of connecting her mobile phone to my sound system.
“Any preferences?”
Eliza shrugged and suddenly looked a little insecure. “None of these songs they play at all the weddings, please. No pop song from the last, well, from this or the last century.”
From the corner of my eye I espied Miss Melissa, who, as I recalled now, attended dance classes run up to Eliza’s close friend, who through holding the phone appeared to be mistress of the music, and whispered in her ear.
Murmurs of deliberation were heard, but I kept myself from listening into them. A part of me wanted the surprise.
“Good choice!”, Gemma exclaimed and high-fived the little girl.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr and Mrs Simcoe!”, she then announced our dance.
Knowing my friends, I would have thought they’d make us dance a minuet, solely to satisfy their curiosity of catching a glimpse of our former selves, but no such thing happened.
Instead, the first bars of The Blue Danube gently nudged us into motion. The Viennese waltz was a dance well-known to both of us, though my Eliza will always be my superior in matters of dancing.
We never danced it together, though, and it was quite exciting to do so.
“You must have impressed the ladies well”, my darling teased as we twirled through the room.
“Well, as Baron Eastwell, my pseudonym at the time, I dwelt in Vienna for a while- and I cannot say I lacked the attention of ladies”, I teased her.
“Pretentious as always. I recall your bitterness at being denied the title of Lord Simcoe.”
“I don’t have need of being a lord when I have the most wonderful lady by my side who makes me feel like the king of the world, so happy am I.”
Both of us suppressed tears of great emotion and joy until our dance drew to our close. From then on, less formal music was played and all made themselves comfortable talking, drinking and laughing until late into the night.
When at last, our guests left, Mr Flamel turned to me and bade me wait a moment. He went to his rental car he had parked around the corner and returned with a gift basket.
“I was asked to give this to you. A friend in America ordered it and asked me to pick it up and give to you in his- their name.”
Frowning and wary, I accepted the basket, a tasteful arrangement of wine bottles with an element that immediately sent a shiver down my spine- an apple resided in their midst, red and quite appealing to those partial to this particular fruit with a card of thick, cream-coloured paper taped to it.
Immediately, I ripped off the card and opened the envelope. All it said was:
With the most heartfelt felicitations on the occasion of the marriage of Mr and Mrs Simcoe,
A+E Hewlett
With wild eyes, ire and confusion, I looked at Flamel, ready to prove to him he was not immortal at all.
“I might have told a few friends a little too enthusiastically about the wedding-invitation we received”, he defended himself sheepishly and was awarded a scolding glance from Mrs Flamel.
Eliza joined us, eager to learn what the confusion was about, held the apple in her hand, read the card and laughed.
-And I laughed, too.
Thus, I draw my narration to a conclusion, though our story is not concluded yet as the world knows no such thing as happily-ever-after-s. We have fought in the meantime betwixt now and our wedding, have disagreed, but laughed and above all, loved also.
Eliza suggested to plant a tree from the apple seeds in Hewlett’s apple and when it is grown enough to bear fruit, to arrange for a basket of them to be sent to Mr and Mrs Hewlett. They certainly will appreciate the reciprocation of their fine-tuned allusion to history and the offering of mutual peace that shall also lie therein.
The Misses Cooper shall grow up and one day, they will ask us questions and one day and perhaps most sadly, those who are living must eventually die.
We shall see all these days, and we shall be happy and mourn with those we have gathered around us as our friends, be with them on good and bad days, but most importantly, we have each other.
My account of my previous life and how we, my wife and I, found each other again after more than two hundred years, shall thus be concluded today, on the 4th of November 2019, which marks the 213th anniversary of an empty coffin having been lowered into a mock-grave.
This empty coffin was buried with two equally empty hearts, heavy as the stones put into the wooden box to make it appear filled.
Now, these hearts, tho’ one of them is quite dead, quiver again with the delights of love and friendship of such a quality as can only be found in one’s soul mate.
Together, our hands entwined once more, through a love forged in the past, we look at the future with gladness and joy, holding on firmly to another in days of sunshine and of shadow, both of which are sure to come our way.
Omnia vincit amor- even death.